In Concert
Pacific Opera Victoria’s Tosca
When: April 4, 6, 10 and 12 at 8 p.m. April 14 at 2:30 p.m. Lectures one hour before showtime.
Where: Royal Theatre
Tickets: $37.50 to $130 at rmts.bc.ca or 250-386-6121. Student rush tickets $15, subject to availability 45 minutes prior to each performance.
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No one knows better than maestro Joey Pietraroia that Tosca is a good opera for beginners.
As a saxophone student at McGill University in the 1980s, Pietraroia caught the dramatic second act of Puccini’s classic production performed by the Metropolitan Opera on TV. In that moment, he began reconsidering his career path in favour of something new: conducting.
“I was just taken by it, it just grabbed me,” Pietraroia said in an interview. “I thought, I need to get involved in opera.”
Decades later, Pietraroia is preparing to conduct the same opera for Pacific Opera Victoria, which opens tonight.
The tragic story, for the unacquainted, is one of love and jealousy and violence and power struggles. Tosca (sung by soprano Joni Henson) is a coquettish opera singer in love with the idealist painter Cavaradossi (tenor Luc Robert).
But in order to save him, she’s lured into a bargain with the sadistic police chief Scarpia (baritone David John Pike) — the show’s villain.
For Pietraroia, it was Puccini’s sense of drama that drew him to Tosca.
“It’s so striking and it’s very dramatic and it’s very poignant at the same time,” he said.
“I don’t want to use this [phrase] in a bad sense, but it’s almost like a film score, in the way that Puccini is really able to set the mood, set the scene and make us feel the emotion of the characters thorugh the music.”
Pietraroia also conducted Tosca in New Brunswick in 2005. While POV’s version can’t compete with the scale of the Metropolitan Opera, he’s looking forward to an expanded score and fuller orchestra this time around.
While Pietraroia is revisiting the seed of his conducting career, the show’s director is experiencing Tosca for the first time.
Amiel Gladstone, co-founder of Theatre SKAM, returns to Victoria to make his Pacific Opera Victoria debut as stage director.
Having spent most of his professional life in the theatre world, Gladstone said he was attracted to the sheer scale of opera.
“I feel like I’m captain of a large ship or something. I’m not exactly sure how the ship works. And I know where we’re going. But things like sharp turns are virtually impossible,” Gladstone said of the steep learning curve.
Gladstone’s previous opera experience includes Hansel and Gretel, Lucia di Lammermoor and Jack Pine for the Vancouver Opera.
To prepare himself for the job, Gladstone immersed himself in the world of Tosca, including visiting Rome and the places referenced in the opera. Among his surprises: Puccini took some imaginative liberties himself.
Scarpia lives in the Palazzo Farnese in Tosca, for example. But in reality, only royalty could live there, not a police chief, Gladstone said.
“It’s based on some realistic settings, but there’s also some make-believe at play,” Gladstone said. “Even from the beginning, when they were creating the opera, they were also using their imaginations.”
Sharp turns won’t be on the agenda, with Gladstone planning to create a production fairly loyal to the original that premièred in 1900. But while he initially worried about purists, Puccini’s own artistic liberties gave him some confidence.
“The ultimate person I want to please would be Puccini, so knowing he would make these leaps of the imagination felt like, oh, that would be OK. As long as we’re getting the essence of the opera,” Gladstone said.
Now he’s looking forward to seeing it all come together.
“Last night I was looking at it, [thinking] it’s like a painting coming to life,” he said. “There’s something about being able to work on a canvas that size that’s really fun.”